Present Day
by Me and stuff
Summary: A Christmas story featuring Amy, Rory and the Doctor, roughly set during the Pond Life period before series 7. It's about the Ponds' retirement from companionship and a mysterious present on Christmas morning that does not seem to belong to anyone. Who is the present from? And what could be hidden inside? Socks? A bomb? Handles? You're about to find out.
1. Malaciss

_Christmas Eve_

"You're not fooling us, Doctor!" shouted Amy.  
There was no response.  
"I can see you, you know?"  
"What is it, honey?" Rory stepped through the door and onto the veranda of their house. Amy directed his look towards a large blue object that was currently standing behind a stately, yet very see-through fern in their frost-covered garden.  
"What the hell is he doing?" he asked.  
Amy shrugged her shoulders. "I think he is trying to hide."  
"Hide? How does he think he's hiding when he parks his gigantic box directly on our grass?"  
"Because…" Amy leaned forward and whispered in Rory's ear. "He's put camouflage on."  
Rory looked again. It had been hard to see through the fern at first, but the TARDIS seemed to be partly covered in what looked like camo-coloured sheets of paper. However, it looked as if the Doctor had gotten bored with the task half-way through and decided that about ten sheets would do the job just as well.  
"You know", Rory called across the lawn, "that thing of yours is terrible at hiding; you can't just make yourself invisible with some bloody stickers!"  
The TARDIS didn't make a sound.  
"Let's go inside", said Rory. "I'm getting cold. He'll show himself eventually".  
Rory turned around, opened the door to their front room, made a step inside and jumped.  
"Ha Ha! Fooled you!"  
The Doctor's voice echoed in the gigantic control room of the TARDIS that Rory suddenly found himself in. At first, everything seemed to be exactly as he remembered it. The orange light, the warm air circulation and the smell of something indescribable with hints of strange alien machinery and a boiling vegetable stew. Then he noticed the cardboard cut-out snowflakes pinned to the handrails of the upper platform and the Christmas balls floating in the air. And the Doctor, half walking, half jumping around the console unit, wearing a…  
"Oh my god!" said Rory.  
"Oh my god!" agreed Amy, who had followed and now stood next to him, taking in the Christmas-decorated TARDIS with an open mouth that was half-distorted to a look of open abhorrence. Behind her, Rory could see their row house. Apparently, he had gotten inside the TARDIS by opening its back door and he had no idea how.  
"Doc… Ah!" Amy screamed as the Doctor turned a great lever on the console unit and TARDIS doors snapped shut. The floor began to shake and the familiar sound of the engine made it unmistakably clear that they were leaving, without any indication of where to. The Doctor turned around, a big smile just underneath the hideous Santa hat he had put on.  
"HELLO PONDS! MERRY CHRISTMAS!" he shouted, pulling a switch and pressing some buttons, all with his back to the console unit, the result of which was even more shaking and a loud trumpet sound from the engine.  
"NOTE TO MYSELF: NEVER FLY THE TARDIS BACKWARDS!" he continued yelling as he pulled another lever, trying to stabilise his ship.  
Amy meanwhile, just barely maintaining her balance, stumbled up the stairs, jumped towards the Doctor and wrapped him in a big hug, only to violently pull the hat from his head and throw as far away as she could.  
"HELLO YOU TOO!" she yelled.  
"WHAT IS HAPPENING?" came the sound of Rory from the bottom of the stairs.  
"THIS IS MY CHRISTMAS PRESENT FOR YOU!"  
"THAT YOU'RE KINDNAPPING US?"  
The Doctor thought about it for a moment, while the TARDIS continued to make shrieking, mechanical noises, the Christmas balls dangerously dangling around. Two of them hit each other and broke in the air, pieces flying into the console unit and vaporising.  
The Doctor was finished thinking. "WELL… YES, KIND OF! And here we are…" he muttered to himself while checking the display on the console unit. The TARDIS had stabilised and now seemed largely at peace. She was clearly still rushing through space at great speed, but the Doctor looked like he had gotten her under his control.  
"We now prepare for landing, please fasten your seatbelts and make sure that your seats are in an upright position!" he said very loudly, maybe because he was still half-used to having to yell over the noise of his incorrectly operated spaceship.  
With a heavy thump, the TARDIS came to a halt. The Doctor jumped down the staircase and hugged Rory who was still looking perplexed.  
"Hello Doctor", he said.  
"Hello Rory!" answered the Doctor, a lot more enthusiastically.  
"Nice to see you. Whatever you're about to say…" he said as the Doctor had already opened his mouth "…could you just hold that thought for a moment and explain how on earth you made the door to our house lead to your TARDIS?"  
"Well that's easy, a door's just a door, theoretically it could lead anywhere, you're just lucky that most doors lead to whatever lies behind them."  
"And you made this one lead here?"  
"Well, yeah, it's just a spatial gimmick. You only ended up six metres from where you wanted do though, so you could have done a lot worse. You could have winded up in Narnia."  
"And where are we now?" asked Amy from the top of the stairs.  
"You are…" The Doctor's face lightened up and it was clear that this was what he really wanted to talk about "on _Malaciss_, a small but delightful planet at the heart of Andromeda. Ponds, I give you your greatest Christmas present of all time, the trip of a life time and the most beautiful planet in the galaxy, well, apart from _Neobey_, but you really don't wanna go there, whole planet's made of compost, lovely shapes, but there's a reason why the Neobeyens don't have noses…"  
"Doctor", interrupted Amy. She and Rory had exchanged looks.  
"What?" asked the Doctor. He looked down at himself and fixed his bowtie, as if there was something wrong with his appearance. But he wasn't even wearing the hat anymore.  
"Doctor… this is really nice and all, but…" she looked at Rory for help.  
"Look, we kind of wanted a quiet Christmas this year", he said. "No foreign planets…"  
"No intergalactic battles", added Amy.  
"Just, you know, sitting around, watching telly and opening presents", finished Rory.  
"Telly?" asked the Doctor as if he was personally offended by the notion that anyone could prefer telly over what he was about to show the two. "But, but, but… You don't understand."  
He looked at them, uncomprehending. When he spoke, he sounded almost helpless. "It's a planet completely made of shape-shifting material. It can transform into anything you like, green waterfalls, clouds made out of candyfloss, pink unicorns… It can build you a giant telly _and_ giant presents!"  
"Well, that sounds really lovely but… you know, we like our home. And you're the one who gave it to us."  
"Which we'll be eternally grateful for", added Rory.  
"Of course." Amy swayed back and forth, trying a smile for the Doctor whose shoulders had now sunk.  
"Just one look", he said. "Just have one look."  
And he stepped towards the TARDIS doors and pulled them open. A cool breeze rushed into the interior of his spaceship, as the open doors offered the view over a landscape of ever-changing, but solid forms and colours and stirred-up areas that could have been both water and fields, seemingly endless and hauntingly beautiful.


	2. Dust and Frost

_Christmas morning_

It hadn't been snowing overnight. Not that there had been any solid reason to expect otherwise, but Amy knew that all kinds of things could happen when the Doctor was there. It was almost impossible to predict what he would do or say next and what his next big idea might be. So as she had gone to sleep on Christmas Eve she had at least considered that the Doctor, using some kind of cloud or temperature manipulation could have - somehow - turned the boring grey weather into a beautiful snowy scenery. She knew he loved snow.  
Amy instantly remembered this when she woke up in her bed. Her arms which had lain over the blanket, felt weirdly cold. She connected those two things, yawned, got up and rushed to the window - only to find that the street outside was just as clear and grey as the day before. But where did the cold come from then, she wondered, as her teeth began shaking. She searched her wardrobe for a woollen jumper, found one and put it on before she woke Rory.  
"Good morning, sweetheart!"  
He answered incomprehensibly into his pillow.  
"First, merry Christmas. Second, I kind of have a feeling that he's up to no good."  
"Mry Chrsms", Rory muttered after he had freed half of his mouth from the pillow. "Why, what is it?"  
"Oh, you'll notice", Amy answered. He kissed Rory on the cheek. "Come on, let's go! I wanna see what he's doing! And I want you to open your presents!"  
"Was that a plural?"  
"It was!" she exclaimed as she went out the door.  
It was simple logical deduction. If the house was unusually cold regardless of the ordinary temperatures outside, then the cold must originate from somewhere inside the house. And Amy strongly suspected that her internal speculation from the evening before had indeed come true, albeit in a different form than she had imagined.  
When she came down the staircase to the living room, the first thing she saw was the Doctor, lying face-down on the rug, covered in thick white snow that seemed to originate from a blurry entity that hovered just beneath the ceiling. The whole living room was turned completely white, snow on the television, snow on the Christmas tree, snow oozing out of the vase on the shelf. It all looked so strange and out of place, Amy almost had the feeling as she had just walked into a television advert.  
When he heard Amy's footsteps, the Doctor turned on his side and his face lit up as he saw Amy. Apparently, he hadn't been sleeping after all and merely decided that lying face-down for a while would be a good idea.  
"Merry Christmas!" he said. Amy's squinting eyes didn't seem to show the reaction he had been hoping for and he quickly scanned the living room with his eyes. Had he done something wrong? What was it that held back her delight?  
"Good morning!" Amy said. "You seem like you're looking for the one place you forgot to cover in wet white stuff."  
"Did I really?" For a moment, the Doctor looked even more concerned, then he squinted back at Amy.  
"Oh!" he said "Oh! You're worried that when all this snow melts, it will turn into water which will then seep into your furniture and electronical devices and destroy them!"  
"Yes, I… am", Amy answered, thankful that she didn't have to allude the Doctor to the problematic nature of his living room decorations herself.  
"Don't worry about that", he said reassuringly. "I thought it all through."  
"You will do some weird sciencey thing and make all the water from this room disappear."  
"No."  
"We will have to maintain a constant temperature of minus ten degrees for as long as we live here."  
"No. Of course it's not real snow. Who knows what could happen once you get real snow into a living room? Well I do: Bad stuff."  
"So, what is it then, because this…" Amy put her hand into the white substance on the coffee table and raised her eyebrow "…actually doesn't feel like snow at all. It's warm. Why is it warm? It's freezing in here."  
"Well, it wouldn't be Christmas if it wasn't properly cold, would it?" the Doctor said and smiled. "That stuff here is basically just dust that had some of its less important components subtracted, the method's very complicated and very cool; would you like to know how I did it?"  
"Not really, no."  
"Oh. Okay."  
"And what did you do to make it all cold, did you subtract the heat particles from the air or something?"  
"Actually, I just used the thermostat."  
"Well, that's another way to do it. Lovely thought, but we probably should turn that back up."  
"Brr…" came the sound of Rory from upstairs. "Why is it so cold? Doctor, what did you do?"  
"Nothing", the Doctor responded immediately. "Well, not much!"  
Amy went over to the thermostat and turned it back to normal room temperature.  
"So, how do we get this stuff off?" she asked. "TARDIS magic?"  
"Vacuum cleaner?"  
"Works for me."  
"All right. Presents!"  
The Doctor turned around and brushed some of the fake snow off a small pile of presents under the Christmas tree.  
"How did you know where we keep our presents?" Amy asked.  
"I didn't. But I had the whole night to look for them."  
"Did you… look in our bedroom as well?"  
"No, of course not. Why?"  
"Nothing."  
"And this one really is for me?" The Doctor held up a small box, wrapped in red paper and with the thick letters For the Doctor on it.  
"Well yeah, kind of, it wasn't really meant to be a Christmas present, but since you decided to show up on Christmas, why not?"  
"Oh, this is exciting", the Doctor said and rubbed his hands. "I mean it's not that I didn't get a lot of presents in my life, I'm 1109, so there naturally were a few, but still…" He sniffed at the present and with closed eyes and a smiling face. "It's a long wait every time for Christmas."  
"Well… You appeared literally one day before Christmas. You could have appeared on any other day, so…"  
"Morning!" Rory said.  
"Good morning, Rory!" the Doctor answered.  
"Oh, you found the presents", Rory said.  
"Uhm, yes, I did. You didn't hide them too well though. In the bottom drawer below the sink…" The Doctor rolled his eyes, as if he felt personally insulted by the way in which human adults hid their Christmas presents.  
"I promise, next time, we will dig a hole for them next time", said Rory and excused himself with the announcement to make tea.  
"Oh boy, don't we all just love Christmas", said Amy, as she brushed some dusty snow of the TV guide on the coffee table.

Meanwhile, unnoticed by all three of them, something appeared under the Christmas tree. Out of nowhere, a new Christmas present had materialised, wrapped in shiny black paper and decorated with a perfect red ribbon. It didn't make any sound, it didn't move or do anything else. It just was there. Existing. And waiting for someone to find it.


	3. The Lone Present

Half an hour later, Amy, Rory and the Doctor were sitting on the now largely snow-free carpet, eating scrambled eggs from plates in their hands. They had so far unpacked a camera, a complete edition of _Calvin and Hobbes_, tickets to a stage show in London that wouldn't start until 2031 (the Doctor had apologised for the mistake and promised to get them current ones), a jumper, a sandwich maker and a strange alien artefact that the Doctor had expressed interest in on one of their travels some time ago, but had been unable to purchase as he hadn't been able to pay with a strand of red hair.  
Now there was only one present left. It was, judging by its appearance, the most perfect present Amy had ever encountered. The shiny black wrapping paper didn't crinkle at a single spot and the red ribbon was geometrically straight.  
"Is that one for me?" asked Amy.  
"I don't know, it's not from me", answered Rory.  
Confronted with Amy and Rory looking at him quizzically, a hint of confusion stole into the Doctor's face. "So, you two are sure that it's not from either of you?"  
"Of course", said Amy and Rory nodded.  
"I think I would remember", he said.  
"Well, that's strange then", said the Doctor.  
"Why? Are you telling us that it's not from you either?" Rory wanted to know.  
"No. Well, yes, in the sense of 'no, it isn't', your language is so confusing. If we were speaking Gallifreyan we wouldn't have such problems. Anyway…"  
The Doctor kneeled down to get a closer look at the present. It was cubical, about 30 centimetres high and wide. The black wrapping paper didn't show a single flaw, apart from a few corns of leftover snow dust.  
The Doctor squinted. "Well, looks just like a present, doesn't it?"  
"Did your family leave something here?" Rory asked Amy.  
"No, definitely not. You know them, they want me to be there when I open something."  
"Well, probably was Father Christmas then", Rory joked.  
"Well, that's just ridiculous Rory", said the Doctor. "Firstly, he doesn't even know you and secondly, why in the universe would he go through the trouble of coming all the way from the Laconia Galaxy just because…" he paused as he caught Rory's look.  
"Oh", the Doctor said. "You're joking."  
"Who… are you talking about?" asked Rory.  
The Doctor chose to be stuck for an answer and soniced the present from every angle. Judging by his static facial expression, it didn't seem to tell him anything.  
"And it definitely wasn't here yesterday?" asked the Doctor.  
"Definitely not."  
"Then it must have come in last night, sometime between two and half past two a.m."  
"How do you know that?" asked Amy. "And why do say 'come in', I mean it's not like it can walk on its own."  
"Because that's when I slept last night. And who knows, things can do all sorts of things. I once knew a lamp that could fart and swear at the same time. I would've thrown it out if the light hadn't been so comfy."  
"So, do you have any idea what it is?" asked Amy.  
"Nope" responded the Doctor and smiled. "But this could be fun. What could have a little brainstorming session, bounce some ideas off each other; it's always fun to have a riddle on Christmas morning. So: What is in that box? Amy!" He pointed at her demandingly.  
"Errr…, a severed human head?"  
Rory cringed and eyed the present both distrustfully and anxiously.  
"You know, like in that movie with Brad Pitt", she added.  
"Must have missed that one", said Rory.  
"Imaginative, but unlikely", commented the Doctor on Amy's suggestion. "Rory!"  
"I don't know", said Rory. "Probably a Mini-Dalek or something like that. If you're around it wouldn't surprise me, to say the least."  
"Well then let's hope it's not a Mini-Dalek", said the Doctor, sonicing the present a second time, again not to his satisfaction.  
"So, are you getting any… signals?" asked Amy.  
"No, no of course not, it's just a normal present", answered the Doctor. "That's what makes it so strange. If you go through all that trouble of putting it inside this house for you to find it, it should be something quite special, shouldn't it? The trouble doesn't match the gain."  
"But what would someone gain anyway from putting a present into our house?" Rory asked.  
"Rory…" The Doctor shook his head in disappointment. "You're human, your race invented Christmas and you can't think of a reason why someone would give you guys a present? Are you really this unpopular in your neighbourhood?"  
"You mean, this genuinely could just be a normal present."  
"I have to admit, it's a peculiar way to hand it to you but, well, why not?"  
"So, you think we should just open it", said Rory.  
Amy suddenly realised that none of them had touched the present yet, as though an unspoken warning kept them all from doing so.  
"I'm going to be a bit more careful at first", the Doctor said. He soniced the box a third time, still without any apparent result and slowly brought the screwdriver closer. When there was just a centimetre of space left, he poked it.  
The reaction of the present was very odd. Instead of a hard barrier, the screwdriver was met with a soft and elastic surface that of all Amy had ever seen, most closely resembled very stretchy and resistant plum pudding. The screwdriver poked a small hole into the present's side, even the wrapping paper stretched without any wrinkles or rips. Suddenly, the whole box didn't look like a present box at all, but rather like a cubic block of elastic rubber with a deceptive exterior.  
"Okay…" the Doctor said and pulled his screwdriver out of the present which immediately regained its old appearance. He put the sonic into his pocket and stared into blank air for two second.  
"I am not sure what to do now", he said.  
"At least we can probably rule out the neighbours. Unless we have Dalek neighbours that is of course", said Rory, in an attempt to lighten up the mood.  
"Hm, not sure about that", the Doctor said. He looked out of the window onto the street. "Does the street outside look normal to you two? I'm not sure I'm the best to tell since that one time when I thought that woman next door was a Slitheen."  
Amy stood up and took a look out of the window.  
"Everything's normal", she said, seeming slightly annoyed. "No Daleks inside, no Daleks outside. Well, it's a fun idea; can you imagine how weird it would look if Daleks were roaming the streets?"  
"Hysterical", the Doctor answered.  
SWOOSH!  
Amy turned around. The Doctor, who had observed his screwdriver and Rory, who had observed the Doctor both looked startled, their hair ruffled and their eyes wide open. Then Amy realised that the black present had disappeared without any trace.  
"Oh, come on!" Amy shouted. "What is this, a bloody Weeping Angel present? Keep looking at it or it will hide in another corner?"  
The Doctor stood up, rapidly scanning the room with his eyes. "I think, in a way, yes."  
"Oh my God", said Amy, grabbed a chair and dropped into it. She looked up at the Doctor. "So, is it bad?" she asked. "Or can we just ignore it?"  
"I don't…" the Doctor paused. He stared at Amy. Then he took a quick look around the room, as if he was checking something. He looked back at Amy. He tried his best to hide it, but he was definitely feeling uneasy.  
Rory had noticed. "What is it, Doctor?"  
"Shh", the Doctor said. Rory rolled his eyes, looked back at Amy. His expression slowly changed to confusion, and then, much more quickly, to fear. He stood up. He opened his mouth, but with a gesture the Doctor commanded him to be quiet.  
Amy looked from one to the other. "What is it?" she said. "What are you staring at?"  
"Amy", said the Doctor. "It's important that you stay calm. Whatever you do, do _not panic_."  
He breathed in through his teeth and Amy looked around, looked behind her, but she couldn't see anything suspicious.  
"Why would I panic?" she asked angrily. "What is it? And where is the present?"  
The Doctor swallowed. "It's right beneath you."


	4. Phoning Home

Amy looked down. There was nothing below or next to the chair or at least nothing that she could see.  
A bird flew by the window. Something buzzed in the proximity. Amy was getting increasingly anxious.  
"What do you mean?" she asked. She became aware that her voice was shaking.  
"It's not a present. It never was a present, it just looked like a present, because it thought it would be the perfect disguise. How do you hide in a meadow? Paint yourself green. How do you hide under a tree with Christmas presents? Make yourself look like a Christmas present."  
"But where is it now?" Amy asked quietly.  
"We were talking about it, touching it; so it needed a new place to hide." The Doctor paused for a second.  
"Count the chairs in this room, Amy", he said.  
Amy turned her head around and counted. There were five chairs in the living room, including the one she was sitting in. Something clicked inside her brain.  
"A moment ago…" she whispered.  
The Doctor finished her sentence: "…there were only four."  
Amy looked down on the chair directly beneath her. It looked just like the others, made of dark wood, with a flat white cushion.  
"It replicates whatever it finds. When there are multiple versions of one thing, it will look like another version. But we don't know if it's dangerous or not", said the Doctor calmly.  
"But that's because we don't know anything about it", answered Amy. "And that means, it would probably be a good idea to get my bum off it."  
"Probably, yes", said the Doctor and eyed the chair anxiously.  
Very, very slowly Amy stood up, as to not arouse the chair's suspicion that its cover had been blown. The farther she got the more was she under the impression that the chair was getting hot. She was already half-standing up and took the last half with a jump, just as the chair suddenly lost its form and turned into a ball of dim light and heavy heat behind her.  
"Duck!" she shouted, as the shapeless entity rushed through the room, just above Amy and the Doctor's heads. A moment later, wood splintered, as it crashed through the door and left a big jagged hole.  
"Amy!" shouted Rory. "Amy, are you okay?" He hurried towards her, helping her up.  
"Yes, yes, I'm fine. Doctor! What is that thing doing? And why is doing that? And what is it?"  
"Why do you always come to me with stuff like that?" the Doctor said. "I'm just an innocent bystander, why don't you ask Rory for a change?"  
Amy stood up and pointed an angry finger at the Doctor. "Because _you_ are the man with the time machine, because _you_ are the man who knows every species in the galaxy and because _you_ are the man who's there to fix everything once everything goes wrong the exact minute he shows up!"  
"Okay, fair enough", the Doctor answered resignedly and turned towards the broken door. He swept over the edge of the hole in the door with his finger and looked through to the other side.  
"Is it gone?" Rory asked.  
"Seems like it. But who knows", answered the Doctor. "Amy, what were your questions again?"  
"What is it? What is it doing? And why?" Amy repeated slowly.  
"Well, I'm still not sure what it is exactly but it probably felt threatened. It thought it had found the perfect form as one of the presents and was proven wrong by my screwdriver, so it turned into a chair. But of course we were only giving it even more attention than before so it decided to, well, go into defence mode. Heat up and be a little aggressive. You know, what things do when they feel threatened."  
"And where is it now? Still in our house?"  
"It's possible", said the Doctor.  
"So, it could be everywhere? A… a book in the shelf?" Rory said. "A bowl in the cupboard, a crumb of paint on the wall?"  
"I don't think it could turn into something that small, otherwise it would have done earlier. It has to have a certain size, probably to retain its atomic structure. And it doesn't seem as if it can get through walls", he said, inspecting the gaping hole in the living room's door.  
"Doctor", said Amy. Rory and the Doctor looked at her; her eyes revealed that she had just thought of something very important.  
"What", the Doctor said.  
"I know where it came from", she said.  
"What? Where?"  
"Come on, is it really that hard? I mean, it's a damn shape shifting… thing! How often did we run across something like that in the last 6 months? It's from Malaciss! That darn planet you brought us to yesterday!"  
The Doctor's mouth opened, closed and opened again. "No no no, that's impossible. We only left the TARDIS for five minutes. And I probably even closed the door."  
"Probably?" asked Amy. "Oh well, then."  
"Oh no, oh no, this is not good." The Doctor walked around the room in circles, nervously rubbing his hands.  
"If it came here…", he said with the face of a man who is about to uncover a terrible secret. "It must have come in with us. And by now, it probably knows that this is not Malaciss."  
"So what will it do?"  
"Do you hear that?" he said and put a finger to his lips. Amy and Rory listened. A very quiet buzzing sound filled the house, seemingly amplified by every single wall. It was impossible to determine its origin.  
"Wasn't that sound already there earlier?" asked Amy.  
"Probably", answered the Doctor. "It's a phone call home."  
"A phone call home?" The second Amy was done talking, almost as a response to her, the sky outside turned dark for a split second. It happened so quickly that neither of the three noticed anything more than the quick darkness which was immediately replaced by the old morning sun.  
A second later, the floor started to shake and became calm again just as quickly as the sky had brightened up.  
"What is happening?" said Rory, lifting his arms in disbelief.  
"Let's go and see, shall we?" announced the Doctor. "I mean, you can stay if you want to, whatever just crashed onto earth ten seconds ago was probably in some way my fault which doesn't make you obligated to come with me, but if you want to…"  
The Doctor tried a persuasive smile.  
Amy exchanged looks with Rory.  
"Can we get dressed first?" asked Rory.  
"No", answered the Doctor. "Well, yes, of course, but please don't take too long."  
Amy shrugged and smiled.  
"See you in a minute!" she said and ran upstairs.  
Rory left more slowly, making gesticulations indicating that he would be following her.  
"Take all the time you need, but please don't need too much!" the Doctor said.  
"Never", Rory answered and disappeared up the staircase.  
The Doctor, who was still wearing his usual clothes from yesterday, went into the hallway and out of the house's front door. It was hard to spot at first, but in a not too far distance there was a wisp of smoke visible, inconspicuously breaking the peace everyone had expected from this Christmas morning. The smoke felt completely out-of-place and alien in this neighbourhood and not only due to the fact that it was green.

The Doctor waited. He stood on the door sill of Amy and Rory's house, observing the smoke in the distance, breathing slowly. He enjoyed the moment for as long as it would last, the last moment of silence, the last moment during which he didn't have to run, shout and wave his screwdriver around yet. The Doctor waited, as the green smoke fumed in helices over the rooftops.


	5. The Empty House

"Green smoke!" said Amy as she stepped out of the house and tightened the waist belt of her coat. "Well, at least that's new. Could be worse. Green smoke! Sounds fun, don't you think, husband?"  
"I can't wait to make its acquaintance", said Rory. He had just appeared behind Amy and taken a look at the smoke which had thinned slightly but was still hanging over the town like an odd little tempest cloud gone lost.  
"That's the spirit, Rory!" The Doctor patted his back. "Off we go then!"  
"No TARDIS?" asked Amy.  
"Nah, don't think the smoke would like it. We'll hopefully know better once we're there."  
"So, it's a nice Christmas walk to a weird green cloud", Rory summarised. "You're right, we had worse."  
As far as one could assess, the green cloud hadn't caused a great sensation around the town. The streets were empty except for a car every few minutes. Everyone sat at home opening presents, eating breakfast and judging by the number of people looking out of their windows, the green smoke didn't attract more curiosity than the three figures walking through the streets on Christmas morning.  
They drew closer to the smoke. It didn't seem to care much for earthly forces such as wind and was still firmly hanging in place, even though there was no new smoke following the old cloud.  
At the next junction, Amy, Rory and the Doctor turned right into a quiet narrow road. On the left there were high and fairly old-looking buildings, the right side was lined with hedges which presumably separated the gardens of the next street's houses from this one. The Doctor sniffed the air and Amy did the same.  
"It smells… weird", she said. "Green", she added.  
"It smells green, thank you, Pond, for that observation, what would I do without you?"  
"Sorry", Amy said unsympathetically.  
While still walking, the Doctor sniffed the air again.  
"What you're smelling", he said grimly, "is klexine. Very powerful and wherever it appears, it's not a good sign."  
"Why, what is it?" asked Rory.  
"It's burning fuel", the Doctor answered and exhaled with a slight sigh. "It's a substance that's only released when the atoms of two certain energetic elements collide and go up in flames. Somewhere around here a spaceship has crashed. I thought so when I saw the smoke, but I had thought, maybe… oh well. Let's look for the ship."  
And he suddenly stopped in the middle of the road, inhaled deeply and disappeared into the hedge to the right.  
"Doctor!" called Amy after him. When there was no response, she sighed and after an exchange of looks she let Rory climb through the hole in the hedge first and then followed. The garden which they had broken into barely provided enough space for a small swing set and an uninflated paddling pool.  
The Doctor was already sonicing the house's glass back door open. The house itself was enormous; it had three storeys and a strong aura of entitlement. The facade looked like it had been recently repainted.  
Seemingly indifferent to the possibility of the owners being inside, the Doctor pushed open the door which led into the living room.  
"A-ha!" he said.  
The first thing Amy and Rory noticed was the big hole in the ceiling, above which a second hole in the ceiling upstairs and yet another one in the roof provided a free view at the sky, albeit through a swathe of green smoke.

The living room itself was dominated by a big leather couch and a modern kitchen unit on the wall opposite the garden door. Art prints of several still lifes hung on the walls, a wide staircase led to the next floor. Everything was clean and tidy. There was no sound and no one to be seen.  
"We seem to be lucky and this family is spending Christmas with relatives", the Doctor said.  
"Either that or they've been pulverised by the spaceship", said Rory.  
"You know what's interesting?" said Amy. She was standing at the exact spot from which she could see the sky through the holes in the ceiling. "It went down exactly this way, so it must have come down…" her finger drew a straight line into the air, "…here."  
She pointed towards where she was standing. And oddly, the white carpet wasn't even smudged, let alone burned.  
The Doctor didn't seem too surprised.  
"Yup, that seems about right", he said.  
"So, what are we looking for?" Amy asked.  
"Well, this is the hard bit. Just look out for anything suspicious, anything that is out of place, anything that looks a little… weird."  
"But not for a spaceship."  
"I highly doubt we will be able to find a spaceship in here."  
"Well, if you say so", said Amy. "Let's take a look upstairs, shall we?"  
"I'll come with you", said Rory and together they treaded the stairs, while the Doctor investigated the kitchen unit.  
Upstairs was another hall, with various door leading to - as Amy assumed - different bedrooms.  
"TOASTERS!" screamed the Doctor from downstairs.  
"WHAT?" Amy and Rory shouted back in unison.  
"It's full of toasters! Come down here!"

It really was full of toasters. The Doctor had opened every cupboard and every drawer in the kitchen and found that every single one was filled up with dozens of toasters of the same model.  
"This is just getting insane", Rory said and took one of the toasters out of the refrigerator; it had been lying next to the butter.  
"Seriously, hOOOWW!" He screamed out in pain and dropped the toaster. Rory held up his left hand which now showed a red burn mark across the palm.  
"Rory, are you alright?" asked Amy, as she inspected his hand.  
"Kind of."  
"Ponds! I understand that you may think Rory's hand may be a top priority now, but please look to your feet!" the Doctor said. They did and Amy's heart sank. There was no toaster lying there, neither intact nor broken.  
"It's now a lamp", the Doctor explained.  
And indeed, only a metre away a new standard lamp stood in front of the kitchen sink, looking exactly like the lamp between the kitchen unit and the door to the hall.  
"I reckon something terrible", said Amy.  
"You're probably reckoning correctly", said the Doctor and he anxiously glanced around the room.  
"So, every single one of these toasters…" said Amy slowly, "is one of those things from Malaciss. Like the present in our house."  
"Yes. They are the cavalry. They heard the signal from the thing in your house and came to earth. But they probably came slightly off-course, landed here and when they heard us coming in, they disguised themselves as the first thing they saw."  
"A toaster", said Rory.  
"Exactly."  
"So, one of those toasters is the real one."  
"Must be."  
"But what about the others?"  
"I don't know", said the Doctor. "They are probably feeling threatened now."  
"So, what are we supposed to do?" asked Amy.  
"I have an idea. But first, we should probably see to it that we get away from the kitchen."  
"Why?" asked Amy.  
"Because that lamp is not happy to see us."  
The lamp had started glowing and slowly began shaking. Some of the toasters did the same, rattling in their drawers and starting to emit smoke.  
"RUN!" the Doctor shouted in the exact second the lamp lost its form and flew directly towards Rory as a glowing ball of light. He dodged it with a dive and the thing that had been a lamp a second ago hit a hole into the fridge, where it rematerialised as a bottle of milk. Immediately afterwards, several toasters from the drawers started attacking them like spears. One of them just barely missed Amy's head.  
The kitchen was in chaos and the toasters started to raze the living room to the ground. Amy, Rory and the Doctor ran to the door in crouched positions. Around them, books, rugs and chairs materialised out of nowhere and shot towards them.  
Then, just a few steps away from the door to the garden, the Doctor suddenly stopped.  
"Doc…!" Amy started shouting, then she realised what it was. The door had tree handles. One of those must still be the real one, but since the other two were alien duplicates it wasn't a chance that the Doctor seemed to be willing to take.  
"Oh shit!"  
"Duck!"  
Amy just barely dodged an attack from an angry dust mop.  
"We have to do something!"  
"Back!" shouted the Doctor and they ran back in the direction of the kitchen. He pointed at Rory, who was nearest to the fridge, and shouted: "Get me something cold from the freezer!"  
"What?"  
"You heard me!" the Doctor answered and pushed Amy aside so she would not be in the way of a doormat that had come from the front door.  
It was in that inattentive moment that the Doctor took a hit to the leg. He stumbled and fell. Amy, who leaned against door frame, watched in horror as one of the paintings on the wall, showing a selection of apples on a wooden plate, transformed into a flickering ball of light and gathered speed towards the Doctor's left heart. The Doctor's hand was in the inner pocket of his jacket, searching for the sonic screwdriver.  
"Where is my ice?" the shouted Doctor in Rory's direction as the light came down on him.


	6. Invasion of the Deadly Everyday Objects

The ice pack Rory threw over hit the red ball of light when it was twenty centimetres above the Doctor's chest. In the blink of an eye, it lost its energy and colour. This happened so quickly that nobody was able to actually see its transformation but when it landed on the Doctor, it had retaken the form of the painting from before. Pressed down by the ice pack, it didn't seem to be able to move.  
"Oh, this is brilliant!" the Doctor said and eyed the immobile shape-shifter by curiously raising his head to have a look at his upper body. He had just enough time to drop it again when he heard the incoming coffee mug from the kitchen. It brushed his nose and a narrow trail of dark blood hinted at the more horrible consequences the cup could have caused if the Doctor hadn't reacted so quickly.  
Without losing any more time, the Doctor grabbed the painting on his chest, pressing the ice pack tightly onto it, and sat up straight. He pushed both into his lap and pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket.

Amy meanwhile was running for her life - in circles, furniture and dishes whirling violently around her. She dodged the rug by jumping into the air and just realised that the shifting shapes had now finally planned what they should have this whole time. Four different attacks from four directions, they were picking up speed, coming closer and closer… There was nowhere to run, nothing to do, Amy closed her eyes.  
A soft piece of cloth fell on her face. Her initial feeling of surprise was quickly replaced by relief and then by amazement as to why the cloth was so cold. She opened her eyes again.  
All the objects in the house had stopped transforming and were now peacefully lying about. If it hadn't been for the destruction everywhere, it could have just looked like a very untidy living room. She turned to Rory, who was still standing by the kitchen unit, frozen, staring unbelievingly at three packets of soup lying at his feet. Judging from his facial expression, they had just tried to perforate his legs.  
With verve, the Doctor jumped to his feet, proudly presenting the still life of the apples.  
"What did you do?" asked Amy. With his free hand, the Doctor fixed his bow tie, before he checked his nose. He was either not aware or not very upset about the wound. In moments like this, Amy found it hard to believe that this man could actually solve any problem that was not related to his appearance.  
"Or did you do anything?" she added.  
"Of course I did something!" the Doctor answered happily. "I did what I could have done in your house, but chose not to do, because it's a little dangerous, well, not that dangerous, I could have tried to get into the neuron flow at the time of shape-shifting, but I kind of wanted to keep my hair..."  
Rory gave Amy a "He's doing it again"-look.  
"Cooold!" said the Doctor, pointing at the ice pack on the floor that Rory had thrown to him. "Cold, cold, cold. Cold is good, cold is static! You see, temperature is basically just atoms whizzing about at very great speed, the faster they run, the hotter it gets. And to completely transform your whole atomic structure, you need incredibly high temperatures, which is why these things don't go well with ice."  
He pointed towards the various objects lying around the place.  
"And once the picture had cooled off, I analysed its new atomic characteristics and distributed them across the room. Woosh! There you go! Crisis averted, everything's cool." With a cheeky smile, he straightened his bow tie again.  
"Now we just need to find a way to communicate with them. Is any of those things in a form that has ears?"  
"Ears?" asked Rory.  
"Yes, ears. Or something similar. Something that is able to interpret sound waves."  
"What about this?" asked Amy, pointing at two identical telephones lying next to each other on the sofa.  
"Yes, that should do the trick", said the Doctor, leaned the apple picture against the sofa and picked up the two phones. Unsure which of them was the real one, he decided to speak into both.  
"Okay", he said. "Here's what we're gonna do…"

The people of the town may had not shown much bewilderment towards the green smoke cloud earlier, but what the residents of the streets between the crash landing point and Amy and Rory's house now saw when looking out of the window was definitely a few points to high on the oddness scale to be ignored.  
Whole families pressed their faces against their windows; children jumped up from the breakfast table, dropped their freshly unwrapped presents and ran outside. Other than Christmas, this wasn't something that would come around every year.  
Led by three young people, two men and a woman, a large parade of hopping, rolling and differently moving pictures, furniture, electronic devices and domestic appliances slowly made its way down the street. The objects weren't being carried or pulled by anything and apart from a red light that some of them seemed to emit sporadically, they looked completely normal, aside from the fact that they unmistakably gave the impression of being alive.  
"I still don't get how we got them to move", said Amy, showing no less amazement for the parade than the children who were now roaming the street as a thankful audience.  
The Doctor who was still slightly limping from the attack earlier, had been in thoughts. It took him three seconds to realise Amy had asked him a question and a further three to think about the answer: "The nature of the atomic structure…"  
"If I say 'I don't get it'", Amy interrupted him. "Then don't start your next sentence with 'the nature of the atomic structure'".  
"Okay", answered the Doctor and thought about it for a moment. He then pressed his legs together and his arms close to his sides and tried to walk on in a way that resembled a penguin. Rory who had not heard their conversation stared at the Doctor with a mix of irritation and resignation. When he noticed, the Doctor returned to his normal, if still a bit limping walk.  
"That was fantastic", said Amy.  
"Please do it again", said Rory.  
The Doctor ignored them.  
"The point is, I can still move even if I'm a little frozen. I just can't run. And those things", he pointed over his shoulder, "can still move, but they can't become hot enough to transform into a different form and attack someone. All right?"  
"All righty", answered Amy and chuckled.  
One of the little girls watching took heart and walked up to them.  
"Excuse me", she said. "What is this?"  
"This?" The Doctor showed a great smile and turned around to marvel at his slow-moving parade for a moment. "This… this is for a film. And it's called…"  
He snapped his fingers towards Amy.  
"Uh…" she said. "Invasion of the deadly everyday objects."  
"Invasion of the deadly everyday objects!" repeated the Doctor enthusiastically. "I always forget that."  
"So, those things aren't real?" the little girl asked.  
The Doctor crouched down to her eye level.  
"No, it's just special effects", he said. "But don't tell anyone."  
"Okay", she answered, slightly disappointed.  
As the little girl skipped back to her friends, Rory leaned over to the Doctor.  
"Do you have a plan…" he asked, "for when we get home?"  
"_A_ plan? I've got millions of plans."  
"Have you got one that will work?"  
"Well, look who's getting picky all of the sudden."  
"I think, we would just appreciate", Amy stepped into the conversation, "if what happened to the crash landing house didn't happen to ours as well."  
"Yes, we'd really like our living room to not be completely destroyed."  
"I'll keep it in mind", said the Doctor. "Any other suggestions?"  
Amy eyed the Doctor's body. "Maybe you should ditch the jacket. Go for something less brown."  
"I hate you", the Doctor said.  
"No, you don't", Amy answered cheerfully. "And now let's go and do… whatever you plan to do with those things. And then let's go to a nice restaurant and spend half the bill on dessert. It's Christmas time, the time of love!"  
"I would be okay with that", said Rory.  
"And on we go", said the Doctor.  
And so they turned into the next street and led their parade of every-day things further towards Amy and Rory's home.


	7. Getting Warmer

"What do we do with dangerous shape-shifters from outer space?" asked the Doctor, standing on the door sill of the house, looking at the odd group of objects lying about before him.  
"We don't let them in", he said and closed the door.  
"Well, that was blunt", remarked Amy.  
"I know, I am like that sometimes".  
"So, what do we do?" asked Rory.  
"Find your ex-present. Get it into the TARDIS and fly back to Malaciss. Those things outside will hopefully notice and follow us. Then we go eat dessert. Any questions?"  
"Yes…" Rory started.  
"No time for questions, we need to get to work!"  
"So we're doing the same thing as in the other house, only this time it's just one toaster we're looking for?" asked Amy.  
"Yeah, that about covers it. Try to think like them, imagine where you would hide, if you were them, look for similarities, look for patterns. You're humans, you're good at that kind of thing anyway. And try to be quick, we don't have much time."  
The Doctor took a wary look out of the window. Rugs, lamps and coffee mugs were trotting alongside the house's wall, positioning themselves outside.  
"Are they bottling us up?" asked Rory.  
"I said no time for questions, but yes. Okay, let's see…" The Doctor went down the hall end stopped at the living room door, which still displayed the gaping hall that the first-present-then-chair had torn into it.  
"It came through here, so where did it go?" He had a look around.  
"The cellar?" suggested Amy.  
"Very possible", said the Doctor, grabbing his sonic screwdriver and pointing its light at the open cellar door.  
"Why are you doing that?" asked Amy. "It didn't help earlier."  
"I don't know, force of habit. No, actually…" he flipped it open and shook it briefly. "I think, there is something down there. I don't know if it's what we're looking for, but at least it's something. Some movement, some signal…"  
Outside, the everyday objects seemed to get more and more impatient. Some of the mugs hopped aggressively on the spot. And before, there had been a flash of red light about twice in a minute, now they were much more frequent.  
"Getting warmer…" commented Rory on the developments on the other side of the window.  
"Yes, that's why we have to hurry up", said the Doctor. "And we need a trap of some sort, many identical objects that are easy to transport."  
"How big should they be?" asked Amy.  
"They should be bigger than a toothpick and smaller than a Mengin."  
"What's a Mengin?"  
"Dangerous brown alien. Distant descendent of the mole rat. When you seem them, don't fall for the balloons trick. Anyway, the point is, they're quite large. And in large parts of the galaxy, they're used for scale quite frequently, oh nevermind…"  
"I've got an idea", said Amy. She went into the kitchen, opened the freezer compartment above the fridge and pulled out two unopened packages of chips.  
"Will those do it?"  
The Doctor's face lit up in delight. "Oh, that is good, that is brilliant!"  
"So, if we trick the thing into transforming into one of those chips, then it won't be able to move, because the others are still frozen", said Rory.  
"Exactly!" The Doctor took one of the packages from Amy and tried opening it. After ten unsuccessful seconds he tried it with his teeth, still to no avail. Amy and Rory watched him with a mix of fascination and enjoyment.  
"Your race is so… weird!" said the Doctor. "Okay mighty wizard humans, show me how to open this piece of… abomination."  
Grinning from ear to ear, Amy picked up a pair of scissors from the kitchen drawer and cut both of them open. The Doctor didn't say a word.  
"Okay, were should we place them?" Amy asked when she was done.  
The Doctor sighed and said: "I think in the hall would be a good idea, it being central and all."  
On any other day, Amy would've found the idea of wasting two packages of chips by spilling them in a pile on the hall floor not only ridiculous but morally questionable as well. Things weren't the same when the Doctor was there.  
"So, one of us has to stay here and look out for it. We can't miss it if it comes", said the Doctor. "I don't think I should do it", he added quickly.  
"I volunteer", said Rory, raising his hand.  
"Well, okay then, Katniss", said Amy. "So, let's try the cellar?"  
Amy led the way and switched on the light above the staircase. The cellar wasn't very big. It consisted of two small storage rooms, with one of them also functioning as a laundry room. Amy flicked two more switches and the two ceiling lamps shed an old, yellow light on the cupboards, shelves and moving cartons.  
"We didn't do this for a while, did we?" asked Amy. "Just us two, exploring strange and dangerous places…"  
"Only this time it's not a distant planet…"  
"But our cellar." Amy shook her head.  
"We should probably try to look as warily as we can at everything. If it's here, it needs to think we know."  
"Do you think poking everything that's here more than once would be a good idea?"  
"It's the only idea I could think of. Just don't poke it with your finger."  
For reasons that Amy couldn't remember, a conductor's baton lay on one of the shelves. She took it and started poking bottles of wine with it.  
"This is so ridiculous", she said.  
The Doctor meanwhile used his screwdriver to dig in a bucket filled with clothes pegs.  
"Do you ever miss it?" he finally asked.  
"Miss what?"  
"You know, just us two… Exploring strange and dangerous places… Does it never bore you to wake up in the same bed in the same town on the same planet every day?"  
Amy's answer got lost in the sound of breaking glass from upstairs and a short scream from Rory. Instinctively, Amy started running towards the sound and at the same time, a can of sieved tomatoes that had been standing on the lower shelf under the window, reacted as well.  
"Amy!" shouted the Doctor. "Look out!"  
But the ball of light had already passed her, purposefully shooting up the stairs.  
"Oh no, it knows its friends are here", the Doctor shouted.  
"Isn't that a good thing?" said Amy as she jumped upstairs.  
"Not necessarily". The Doctor followed on her heels.  
Rory was standing in the kitchen, lunging out on a carton of milk standing on the worktop, a packed ice lolly in his hand.  
"It's milk! And they're coming in!" he screamed at the sight of the Doctor and Amy. Behind Rory, the objects from outside were coming through a hole in the kitchen window, one after one. Most of them weren't able to fully transform yet, but still fast enough to slowly turn the house into a war zone.  
Rory punched the milk as hard as he could in the direction of the chip trap. It flew through the air, emitting red flashes, slowly becoming smaller and slightly yellow. When it landed on the pile of chips, it hadn't yet finished its transformation and looked like a small yellow carton of milk with one pointed end.  
"Go!" shouted the Doctor and grabbed the empty package of chips that was still lying on the kitchen table, while kicking a slowly forward-creeping mug away.  
Rory ran over to the window and punched a pillow that had been trying to violently climb into the house back to the outside ground. When it dropped to the other side it had changed its form to something else Rory could not see.  
"They're defrosting!" shouted Rory. "They're changing again!"  
Amy, who had been covering the half-transformed milk carton with frozen chips, helped the Doctor put it back into the package. When they were done, they stood up quickly and assessed the situation. Outside the house, more and more of the shape-shifters started to move and transform into other things and inside they were spreading mayhem, throwing over chairs and tables, flipping over rugs and violently hitting the wall.  
"We need to make contact with them!" shouted the Doctor and luckily an opportunity in the shape of an attacking flower tub presented itself right in front of him. He hit it with it the packaged chips as hard as he could, splintering the flower tub into different parts who immediately transformed into different small pieces of furniture.  
"They're onto us now!"  
Amy could've told by herself, as suddenly all the shape-shifters in their house stopped mid-air and found a new target: Them.  
"RUN!" shouted the Doctor.  
And they ran. With dozens of violent light balls following them, they ran into the living room where the windows gave the view on the saving shape of the TARDIS.  
If only there hadn't been four of them.


	8. Earth

The Doctor was a man with a remarkable mind. In the five seconds during which he stared out into the garden, he was contemplating multiple possible solutions for how to find the right one and not get killed by angry shape-shifters on the way, each less plausible than the other. The least promising - leaving the house altogether and trying to find a different manner of transport - was only marginally worse than the most promising - distracting the fake TARDISes or getting them to move otherwise, while not getting hit by a horde of angry shape-shifting aliens which he, just a second ago, had unmistakably alerted to the fact that he held one of theirs in his hands.  
The Doctor very much doubted that, once reunited, the shape-shifters would travel home to Malaciss on their own; they were too weak and too unpredictable. What if they decided that earth was a very habitable planet indeed? What if they liked it here?  
During the fourth second, he became aware that the selection of camo-coloured sheets of paper which were still pinned to the side of the real TARDIS had been replicated not to every exact detail. The ones on the nearest TARDIS, standing directly next the veranda, looked flat and almost as if they were printed onto the box itself. Could this be the solution? Just a few metres away, behind a glass door?  
The Doctor stopped short. Behind a glass door…  
"Come on, Doctor!" shouted Amy and without hesitation she opened the door to the veranda and stepped safely into the warm, bright interior of the TARDIS.  
Rory followed in her footsteps and the Doctor who needed a moment to recap what had just happened, jumped just in time to dodge the big attack wave that had been piling up for the last seconds and close the doors the moment he was inside.  
"You had forgotten!" said Amy. "You really had forgotten!"  
"No, I…"  
"I don't care if you forgot, can you just get these things out of our house?" said Rory.  
The Doctor leaped up the stairs and to the console where he pressed a small button and then pulled two of the leavers at the same time.  
The TARDIS came to life and the familiar swooshing of its engines accompanied it taking off and rising up into the sky, slowly dissolving into thin air. A group of red luminous entities had attached themselves to it, following its speed, going higher and higher until they all disappeared in the clouds.

"I could get used to this", said Amy and finished her ice cream with raspberries.  
"What do you mean?" asked Rory. "Spending Christmas chasing aliens around our hometown and dodging deadly toasters?"  
"Nah, just this", she said and gave an explanatory look around the restaurant. "Eating here on Christmas day. It's so unagitated."  
"Well, we've had enough agitation for today, I think", said Rory.  
The Doctor returned to their table.  
"Okay, I've called in a favour. There's a special team coming round to your house right now and they will fix it up again. They can't work at full speed though, the big lightning bolts might confuse your neighbours."  
"Thanks", said Amy. "You still want your dessert?" She pointed towards the Yorkshire pudding with syrup.  
"Oh yes", he said, sat down and took a bite.  
"Hm, not as good as mine", he said.  
"So, how long are they going to take?" asked Rory.  
"Oh, just about… two months."  
"Two months?!" exclaimed Amy and Rory in unison.  
"Or was it two days?"  
"Oh, you…" said Amy.  
"Well, better than the other way around. I could have said 'two hours' and then you would have been disappointed when it's really two days. This way, you're first shocked, then relieved and then everyone's happy."  
"I didn't know you were a Doctor of psychology" said Amy.  
"I am! Want to see my degree? Can you read Noobles? Wait, no, of course you can't. Forget about the degree."  
Amy and Rory chuckled and the Doctor dedicated himself to his Yorkshire pudding.  
After a few seconds, Rory said: "So, that means we're practically homeless for the holidays."  
"I can drop you off in two days if you want", said the Doctor with half his mouth full.  
"Or…" he added after he had thought about it for a moment. "You could, you know… spend Christmas in 18th century France. Or in Apalapucia. I heard they got the disease problems under control now. Or you could spend Christmas on Christmas! It seems to be a really lovely town. I always meant to go there some day."  
Amy and Rory didn't say anything. Both were too polite or not honest enough. But the Doctor knew anyway. He ran his fingers through his hair and shighed.  
"I'm sorry", he said. "I shouldn't even have brought you to Malaciss. If I hadn't brought you there, your house wouldn't be destroyed and we wouldn't have had to deal with all this stupid stuff. I just thought… I just thought it would be nice."  
"It was nice", said Amy. "It really was. It's just, we saw it all, kind of. We didn't see the pink unicorns you promised us there, but it feels like we saw everything else. Things which I never could have imagined anyway."  
She paused for a bit, struggling for words. "And after I'd spent some time with you, I knew that… just everything was possible. Nothing could surprise me anymore. You could give me a pink unicorn for my birthday and I would say something like 'Well, it's all right'".  
The Doctor laughed. Amy took Rory's hand.  
"We just can't live like you. We tried… But we can't. It's just too many surprises. And I like waking up in the same place every morning".  
The Doctor looked at his two friends and smiled at them. It was a smile full of suppressed feelings and hidden thoughts, just an expression of a small, a tiny fraction of what was currently going on his head.  
"I will never be able to let you go", he said quietly.  
They remained silent for a few seconds. Everyone knew this had been a rare moment of pure sincerity for the Doctor. He almost looked like he regretted saying it, as if it had been a swear word slipping out of his mouth.  
"You don't have to", said Rory eventually. "You're always welcome at our house; no one is more welcome than you. I mean, you gave us the house, so you even kind of have the right to let your alien friends destroy it."  
The Doctor's smile grew a little bigger.  
"Where did the favour come from?" asked Amy.  
"What?" asked the Doctor.  
"You said you got the team to repair our house by calling in a favour. How'd you get that favour, what did you do?"  
"Why do you want to know?"  
"Nothing in particular, it's just that whenever you have a story to tell, it usually involves some big explosions, a dangerous monster and a very creative use of an ordinary object."  
Amy smiled at the Doctor.  
"It's a rather long story, I fear. But yes, nobody suspected that the lampshade would be the key to it all…"  
Amy laughed. "I would like to hear it."  
"Me too", said Rory. "It would be nice to just get the story without having been there. It's all the memorable stuff minus the deadly terror."  
"All right then". The Doctor finished his piece of pudding and stretched his shoulders." It was quite a while ago. I visited this planet with a friend, a friend from Gallifrey, she was generally great, but she had the most preposterous name in the universe, seriously, even mine's not that bad…"  
Amy exchanged looks with Rory and smiled. The Doctor didn't notice. He was too busy telling them what had happened on that distant, wild planet, a long time ago.


End file.
